Hurricane Harvey drives up homeless population in Montgomery County

By Catherine Dominguez, Staff writer

Published
3:18 pm CST, Friday, November 9, 2018

The number of homeless in a three county region, including Montgomery County, has jumped 12 percent since last year.

One factor, according to Nancy Heintz, project manager for The Way Home, that caused the increase was Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast in August last year and moved across the region dumping more than 50 inches of rain on areas, including Montgomery County.

Heintz said her organization does an annual count of the homeless, called Point In Time, that is then reported to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The data Heintz provided was from January.

The Way Home, which serves Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, is a collaborative effort that help organizations that provide services to the homeless.

In the three county region, Heintz said there are 4,143 homeless. Of those, 2,529 were in shelters but 1,614 were unsheltered. That is a 12 percent increase since 2017 Heintz said.

In Montgomery County specifically, there were 203 people in shelters and 74 who were unsheltered. Most of the sheltered were women but Heintz said that is due to places like The Women’s Shelter. As far as age range of the homeless, 34 percent were under 18 and 46 percent were over 24. People 18 to 24 made up 24 percent of homeless in Montgomery County.

“The uptick in our homelessness, we really point to Harvey,” she said. “We did find a lot of people were in that situation.”

Veterans make up a large number of the homeless in Montgomery, she said.

Additionally, a “significant” number of the homeless have serious mental disorders or substance abuse issues.

Councilman Duane Ham asked Heintz if she had data on how many homeless are from Montgomery County.

“There are homeless people here but they are not from Montgomery County,” Ham said.

Heintz agreed but said that was not a question that was asked during the count and could not provide an exact number.

Ham asked if there was truth to information that other communities bring homeless people to Conroe. However, Heintz call that an “urban myth.”

“It’s not anything were people are loading them up and bringing them to Montgomery County and dropping them off,” she said.

Councilman Raymond McDonald said it would be important to find out where people are becoming homeless.

“It’s a very important question,” he said. “I have been told by homeless, after they robbed my church, they were brought here.”

Mayor Pro Tem Duke Coon said homelessness is a countywide problem. He asked why there were not shelters in south Montgomery County but rather centralized in the Conroe area.

Heintz said that is typically based on where organizations are located and the availability of affordable land to build shelters.

Coon said homelessness is a countywide problem and everyone needs to get involved.

Heintz agrees.

“To end homelessness, you have to have affordable housing,” Heintz said. “We aren’t going to a public housing model but you have to have a place where people can go that they can afford while they raise their earning power.”